Low-energy antikaon-nuclei interactions studies by AMADEUS: from QCD with strangeness to neutron stars

¹ INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, 00044 Frascati, Italy
² Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Roma, Italy
³ Stefan-Meyer-Institut für Subatomare Physik, 1090 Wien, Austria
⁴ Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
⁵ Excellence Cluster ‘Origin and Structure of the Universe’, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁶ Physik Department E12, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁷ Ruder Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
⁸ National Centre for Nuclear Research, 00681 Warsaw, Poland
⁹ Dipartimento M.I.F.T. dell’Università di Messina, 98166 Messina, Italy
¹⁰ INFN Gruppo collegato di Messina, 98166 Messina, Italy
¹¹ Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie applicate, Università ‘Guglielmo Marconi’, 00193 Roma, Italy
¹² Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, 30-059 Krakow, Poland

^* e-mail: kristian.piscicchia@lnf.infn.it

Published online: 5 January 2018

Abstract

The AMADEUS collaboration aims to provide unique quality results from K⁻ hadronic interactions in light nuclear targets, in order to solve fundamental open questions in the non-perturbative strangeness QCD sector, like the controversial nature of the Λ(1405) state, the yield of hyperon formation below threshold, the yield and shape of multi-nucleon K⁻ absorption, processes which are intimately connected to the possible existence of exotic antikaon multi-nucleon clusters and to the role of strangeness in neutron stars. AMADEUS takes advantage of the DAΦNE collider, which provides a unique source of monochromatic low-momentum kaons and exploits the KLOE detector as an active target, in order to obtain excellent acceptance and resolution data for K⁻ nuclear capture on H, ⁴He, ⁹Be and ¹²C, both at-rest and in-flight.